After dinner that night Nailles poured a strong whiskey and took it up to Tony's room. He sat in a chair beside Tony's bed as he had done so many times in the past when he used to read to the boy Treasure Island.
"How do you feel, Sonny?"
"About the same."
"Did you eat any supper?"
"Yes."
"There was a long thing in the paper on Sunday about how your generation thinks the world is terribly compromised. Do you think the world is terribly compromised?"
"No, I don't think it's compromised."
"You don't think this has anything to do with your trouble?"
"I love the world. I just feel sad, that's all."
"Well I suppose there's plenty to be sad about if you look around, but it makes me sore to have people always chopping at the suburbs. I've never understood why. When you go to the theater they're always chopping at the suburbs but I can't see that playing golf and raising flowers is depraved. The living is cheaper out here and I'd be lost if I couldn't get some exercise. People seem to make some connection between respectability and moral purity that I don't get. For instance, the fact that I wear a vest doesn't necessarily mean that I claim to be pure in heart. That doesn't follow. All kinds of scandalous things happen everywhere but just because they happen to people who have flower gardens doesn't mean that flower gardens are wicked. For instance, Charlie Stringer was indicted last year for sending pornography through the mails. He claims to be some kind of a publisher and I guess dirty pictures is his business. He lives in one of those Tudor houses on Hansen Circle and he has a pretty wife and three children. Flower gardens. Trees. A couple of poodles. The critics would say: Look, look, look what a big facade he's constructed to conceal the fact that he deals in obsceneness and corruption, but what's the point? Why should a man who deals in filth have to live in a cesspool? He's a bastard for sure but why shouldn't a bastard want to water his grass and play softball with the kids?
"We talk an awful lot about freedom and independence. If you were going to define our national purpose I don't guess you could avoid using words like freedom and independence. The President is always talking about freedom and independence, the army and navy are always fighting to defend freedom and independence and on Sundays at church Father Ransome thanks God for our freedom and independence but you and I know that the blacks who live in those firetraps down along the river don't have any freedom or independence in the choice of what they do and where they live. Charlie Simpson is really a great fellow but he and Phelps Marsden and a half a dozen other prominent and wealthy men around here make their money in deals with Salazar, Franco, Union Minière and all those military juntas. They talk about freedom and independence more than anybody else but they furnish the money and the armaments and the technicians to crush freedom and independence whenever it appears. I hate lying and I hate falsehoods and when you get a world that admits so many liars I suppose you've got something to be sad about. I don't, as a matter of fact, have as much freedom and independence as I'd like myself. What I wear, what I eat, my sex life and a lot of my thinking is pretty well regimented but there are times when I like being told what to do. I can't figure out what's right and wrong in every situation.
"The newspapers are sometimes very confusing. They keep running photographs of soldiers dying in jungles and mudholes right beside an advertisement for a forty-thousand-dollar emerald ring or a sable coat. It would be childish to say that the soldier died for emeralds and sables but there it is, day after day, the dying soldier and the emerald ring. And homosexuality. You read a lot about that these days and it bothers me. I wish it didn't exist. Before I joined the Chemists Club I used to have to pump ship in Grand Central and I almost never went into those choppers without getting into trouble. Once when I was going up the stairs this guy came along and took my arm. I had on a Brooks suit and a Locke hat and Peal shoes and the reason I had all this stuff on was to make my intentions clear. So I walked away from him. I didn't hit him. I didn't see his face. I've never seen any of their faces. The only reason I joined the Chemists Club was so that I could have a place in midtown where I could pump ship without getting into a moral crisis. Of course I'm not really a chemist and pushing mouthwash isn't a very inspiring life but when you think of the things we need you realize that someone has to make them. I mean razor blades and soap and bacon and eggs and gasoline and train tickets and shoes. Somebody has to make all that stuff. Tony? Tony?" Tony slept.
Nailles finished his drink and looked lovingly at his mysterious son. Tony was born in Rome, where Nailles had worked as a chemist for FAOU. Nailles had taken Nellie to the international hospital across the river late one afternoon. The doctor was a very fat man. He timed Nellie's pains and told Nailles to return to the hospital at half past ten. When Nailles returned he was taken into an office to have his blood typed. There was no explanation. Later a friend appeared with a bottle of scotch and a package of American cigarettes, both of which were difficult to get at the time. The nuns seemed to have no objection to their drinking; in fact they brought them glasses and ice. Nailles's friend left at midnight. The doctor came in at three. He was sweating and seemed worried. 'Is she in danger," Nailles asked. "Yes," the doctor said harshly, "she is in danger. Life is dangerous. Why do Americans want to be immortal?"
"Please tell me," Nailles said.
"I will tell you that when this is over I would advise her not to have any more children."
There were some peacocks in a park across the street. They began to shriek as the sun rose. This sounded to Nailles portentous. The doctor came in again at eight. "Take a walk," he said to Nailles. "Divert yourself. Breathe some fresh air." Nailles walked down the hill to St. Peter's and said his prayers. Then he climbed the stairs to the roof where all the gigantic saints and apostles stood with their backs to him. He had liked the city of Rome. Now it seemed sinister; the city of the wolf. Rome would kill Nellie. The bloody history of the place seemed to have some bearing on her Me. Rome would murder Nellie.
He walked across the city on foot, trying to sweat out his pain. In some back street he encountered an old man selling phallic symbols and death's heads. He walked to the zoo and had a Campari at the cafe. Beside the caf6 was a cage of carnivorous birds, tearing at raw meat. Leaving the cafe he saw a hyena; then a cage of wolves. When he got back to the hospital a nun told him that he had an eight-pound son and that his wife was out of danger. He howled with relief and banged drunkenly around the waiting room. He saw Nellie and his son that night and Tony seemed to him then to be brilliant, impetuous and strong. Much later they had discussed the possibility of adopting a brother or sister for Tony, but a foundling would have challenged Tony's sovereignty and this was something they did not want.
He had no way of judging his worth as a father. They had quarreled. When Tony was nine. He had suddenly given up all his athletics and friendships and settled down in front of the television set. The night of the quarrel was rainy. Nailles came into the house by the kitchen door. Nellie was cooking. Nailles kissed her on the back of the neck and raised her skirts but she demurred. "Please darling," she said. "It makes me feel as if I were in a burlesque skit. Tony's report card is on the table. You might want to take a look at it." Nailles mixed a drink and read the report. The marks were all C's and D's. Nailles walked through the dining room, crossed the dark hall to the living room where Tony was watching a show. The tube was the only light, shifting and submarine, and with the noise of the rain outside the room seemed like some cavern in the sea.